Peercast各个版本的更新记录

v0.102

New release:

Fixed: A problem where channels could connect back to themselves and endlessly stream in a loop.

Fixed: Initial auto-Find retry problem. Sometimes it would just give up and you`d have to hit Find again.

Added: Channel window shows status of channel: Connecting/Receiving etc.

v0.103

We have a new version of PeerCast available for download.

* Ping/Pong traffic should be much reduced. Pongs are hash-cached so that clients can discard pongs they`ve already had. TTL times have been reduced to 2 for the first ping, then they ping again only once with a TTL of 7. Pongs are also only sent when the client needs more connections.

* IP address is returned when connecting, this means clients can now get their WAN IPs and figure out for themselves if they`re firewalled or not. It also means that there should be more valid IP addresses around.

* CPU usage has been reduced by increasing the idle time in a few places. This was only really noticable when clients were first connecting to the network.

* Peercast now tells you if it can`t bind the server socket, this caused a few problems with people running the client more than once.

* Clients no longer send back query hits for channels that are not receiving or broadcasting. This should reduce the amount of dead channels that get returned in search results.

Please visit http://www.peercast.org for the latest version.

cheers,
giles

v0.104

A new version of the peercast client is at http://www.peercast.org/peercast.exe

Changes include:

* Fixes for hosts behind routers/NAT. If you are behind a router and it is sending packets back to your machine, then please select the NAT option. Otherwise, leave it off.

* Fixes to Listen/Browse IP numbers. Clients now detect where the host is coming from (LAN or WAN) and uses the appropriate IP addresses for the web server pages.

v0.105

Moments after uploading v0.104 one of the test machines here finally managed to crash in the debugger. So I think I`ve fixed that crashing thats been happening since v0.103

New version v0.105 - http://www.peercast.org/peercast.exe

If it doesn`t crash tonight (we have 10 of them running here) I will mail everyone whos signed up for notifications.

v0.106

Sorry for the wait!

Changes:

* Push support. This basically allows anyone connecting from behind a firewall to broadcast and share streams without having to use NAT. So now if you can connect out, then you can broadcast/share. This will allow a lot more clients to provide streams back to the network.

* Network overhead has been severly reduced. Clients now route packets correctly to reduce the amount of cyclic packets that were being sent around.

* More information is returned in search results to allow more intelligent channel switching. This is important because finding another stream when one has failed should be as quick as possible.

* Automatic firewall/NAT detection. We now detect if you are behind a firewall, if you have NAT forwarding packets to your machine, or if you are connecting with normal dialup.

* Listeners/Hosts numbers should be much more accurate now.

* Max KB, Streams and Connected fixed.. This should have been working properly in v0.105, but wasn`t 

* Multi-threading problems should be fixed now, this may have been causing the XP BSOD problem that some users have had.

* Built-in web browser ON/OFF switch. This can be used to stop other people browsing directly to your machine (browsing from the same machine is always allowed regardless of this setting.)

* DOS prompt no longer gets displayed when clicking Listen or Browse.

* Your default browser should now open when clicking Browse.

As always, please post any comments/problems to the forums so that everone can see.

Please note:
We`ve tried to be as compatible with older versions as possible, this means that it may take a while for some of the above changes to be noticeable because of the amount of pre 0.106 clients still out there.

v0.106B

We had a bug where the HTML output from peercast was missing a carriage return. This was causing problems for Mozilla and Opera browsers and should now work OK.

Please download v0.106B from http://www.peercast.org/download.php to fix this problem.

v0.106C

A small problem that was making it hard to connect to the network sometimes has been fixed. We had an "if firewalled" statement round the wrong way so Pongs weren`t being sent out when they should have been.

v0.106D

This is quite a big fix..

* Streams weren`t syncing correctly with their channels. Sometimes (always in some cases) if you tried to listen to a channel the stream that was providing the data would just wait around for ages trying to sync up. Very stupid bug, but caused lots of problems trying to listen to channels, which is the whole point of peercast.

* Channels now do not ask for a push if they`re behind a firewall.

* New Bump button added.. if you get a bad connection to a channel.. press this..

v0.106E

* Fixed problem with resolving host names/IPs on some versions of Windows.

v0.107 is making progress, we have save settings and track info/artist more or less working now

v0.106F

A few quick fixes before 0.107:

* GIV response now sends correct channel index. This was causing Pushes to not work if the other end had more than 1 channel connected.

* Fixed Hit reply packet overflow when replying with lots of channels.

* Added client "alive" check.. Pings are sent every 30 seconds if nothing is received from the other end and the connection is dropped after 60 seconds of nothing at all.

v0.107

We have a new version available for download:
http://www.peercast.org/download.php

Some new features:

* Meta-data streaming of the current track title and url. You will now see what song is playing from both your MP3 player and from the WWW interface. It will take a little while for other users to update to the latest version, so not all channels will display this yet. But there are already some channels using this feature: eg. "Mixfreaks", "Soma Tribute" , "Exp&Odd" , "Pure80s"

* A "DJ button" that broadcasters can use to insert messages in place of the track title. This can be useful to alert listeners about upcoming events, new songs, downtime etc. By default PeerCast will alternate the title and message every 10 seconds, this interval can be changed in the .INI file :

* All settings are now saved in a file called PEERCAST.INI which is created in the directory that PeerCast was executed from. You should not need to edit this file normally, but see above.

* Version updates are now checked automatically. You will see a message displayed when there is a new version available.

Note: If you are using the Winamp ShoutCast plugin to stream data, please set the port number to be the same as PeerCast now. ie. NOT the PeerCast port minus one.

Regards,
PeerCast Team

ps. Shoutcast was misspelt Streamcast in the mail notification that was sent out.. Sorry for the confusion.

v0.107E

This hopefully fixes the problem where broadcasters` channels became broken/noisy up sometimes.

v0.107F

A new "Play All" button has been added that lets you listen to all of the available channels. This can be useful for quickly switching between them using the |< and >| buttons in your player.
Broacasters could also use this feature to allow listeners to "skip" the current song. They simply need to broadcast 2 channels, one with the current song and another with the next song.

0.108E - Linux

We now have a Linux version available.

A completely new HTML interface is now supported in both Windows and Linux, and the old Windows GUI can be disabled by using the -zen commandline option.

Linux users should just gunzip the peercast.gz file, and run the peercast executable. Then use a standard web browser, such as Mozilla to connect to your peercast client at http://localhost:7144/

Windows/Linux downloads at:
http://www.peercast.org/download.php

v0.108E installer

We have a new Windows installer for PeerCast:

http://www.peercast.com/download.php

This installs the client in Program Files and (optionally) the Start menu, you can even install the client as an NT service.

Many thanks to casterclub for helping out with this

v0.108F - Important - Please Read

Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2002 8:58 am    Post subject: v0.108F - Important - Please Read  

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This is an urgent update to fix a problem with the URLs on the HTML admin page.

The URL (containing your password) of the admin page was sent to the URL site as a "referer". This means that someone on that site could obtain your admin password by looking at their logs.

Please update your client ASAP.

Do not click on any URLs in the admin page until then and please change your password.

Incidentally, Shoutcast DNAS Server appears to have the same "bug".. At least, clicking on their disclaimer at the bottom of the admin page, inadvertently sends your password to their site.

v0.110

Thanks for waiting!

v0.110 has been released and now supports OGG format audio - if you don`t know what OGG is, then please give it a try - you`ll never use MP3 again.

Other changes include:

* peercast:// URLs
eg. Click here to listen to Soma Tribute

* Task tray icon
Allowing you to control peercast and listen to any station with one click.

* Enhanced Relay Mode
To allow relay+broadcasting from the same client.

* Much better stream syncing

v0.110A

* Fixed a problem if you had more than 8 idle streams.. Clicking on peercast:// links would stop working because there were no channel slots left.

* Added a new security section on the Settings HTML page. This now allows you to select different settings for each server port. For instance, you could set port 7145 to allow HTML and leave port 7144 open for peercast connections only. This should give you a bit more security from password hacking etc. It also makes more use of the 2 ports, currently 7145 is only there for shoutcast`s benefit. You can now use it as your "admin" port and use IP filtering/NAT/etc. on your router to secure it.

http://www.peercast.org/download.php

v0.110B

A new version is now available

* Linux fixes for seg. fault stoppage

* peercast now works with Windows Media Player again

* Added HTTP Authorization
- Now you can use the latest Oddcast+icecast2
- Please remember that icecast2 streams OGG. icecast/shoutcast streams MP3.

* Safer, more orderly servent threads
- As well as being generally nicer, it may also help prevent the stop errors that some people were getting using certain NICs + XP/W2K. If you were getting the errors before, but aren`t with this version then please let us know.

* IP:port in HTML title

* Fixes for various IDLE/RECEIVE problems, including the problem where streams to "broken" channels would not close properly.

* Added user friendly uptime stat in the Information page

* Fixes to various channel syncing problems.
- If you get any "skipping" now, ie. the stream sounds like it jumps forward every so often, it means the uploader doesn`t have enough bandwidth to serve you. We`ll add a fix later on to detect this and automatically "bump" the channel when it happens.

* Changed "relay mode" to "root mode".. Unless you`re running a private network, please don`t set it. A "root" is a pong cache in Gnutella terms.

v0.112

New features:

* A new settings section called "Filters", it allows you to do 3 things with ranges of IP addresses:

1. Allow connections in/out. Default is 255.255.255.255, which is allow all.

2. Register certain IPs as being "Private". Private IPs are ignored in the max streams/output calculation. So for instance if you enter 192.168.1.255, then any machine on your LAN can listen to streams directly (or via another peercast client) without affecting your bandwidth/connection limits for other users.

3. Ban IPs - speaks for itself

To add a new IP mask just enter it in the blank box and tick the appropriate boxes, then Save Settings. To delete an IP just remove the IP address or enter 0 into it.

255 is a wildcard, eg. 100.255.255.255 means all IPs that begin with 100.
255.255.255.1 means all IPs that end in 1 etc..

On the Information page, Total Streams and Total Output is divided into 2 numbers now- Public/Total.

* XML added to search results - channel/track info is now displayed without having to relay the stream. (from 0.112 compatible clients at least)

* Searches by genre, bitrate, ID etc.

* New HTML channel layout, with new channel "Info" pages showing relayed IPs + lots of info.

* Various fixes to track info updates - Channel description, genre, url etc.. is now read properly.

* Automatic HTML refreshes + better search handling

v0.112A

* Added new HTML view log

* Changed log output settings

* Fixed channel hit uptime value

* Fixed links to open target _blank (new window)

* Changed HTML to output direct rather than via XML (faster, simpler, less memory)

* Added "skips" value to XML results

* Clients now ignore other clients pre v0.110

v0.114

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Our apologies for the delay, the last couple of weeks have been quite slow because we`ve been trying to find ways of funding peercast development. If you haven`t already, please take a look at 2 ways you can help by either buying stuff from the store or even by donating.

New in this version:

* External relaying - You can now make peercast relay any shout/ice stream simply by giving it a URL of a playlist (pls/m3u) or mp3/ogg file. Info such as genre/description etc. is read automatically if its available from the source.

* Cookie/HTTP (basic) authentication support - This makes things safer because passwords aren`t displayed in the URL. Select between the 2 types from the main Settings HTML page.

* Improved taskbar icon + channel info popup window - Left click to bring up a list of channels, right click for the Help/Advanced menu etc.

* Bug fixes for root nodes - The initial lookup pongs weren`t being sent back and received correctly. So it should be much easier to connect now.

* Playing a channel doesn`t require IE any longer (finally!).. So you won`t get IE popping up briefly anymore.

Email notifications will be sent out early next week in case there are any major problems found in the next couple of days.

v0.115B - Please read

Most of you will have probably noticed a huge increase in bandwidth usage in the last week, so its been difficult to find channels and broadcast/relay. This was caused by a big increase in users after PeerCast was featured in a few major magazines/sites etc.

We`ve changed the way PeerCast does searches now and we`ve also put in bandwidth caps and more buffering to make sure that you don`t spend all your bandwidth routing traffic.

The bandwidth cap is currently set to default to 1Kbits/second per network connection. So this means that if you have 6 connections (not channel relays, just network connections) then you should only see a maximum of 6 Kbits/s overhead.

The HTML Information page now contains some detailed statistics so that you can see exactly whats going on with your bandwidth.

You may find it hard to find channels for a little while, but please bear with us until enough people have upgraded to make a noticable difference.

v0115B - http://www.peercast.org/download.php

Update If you downloaded 0115A in the hour or so it was available please download again. Sorry about that.

v0.115C

Minor update to 0115.

* Fixes to Max Output setting
* Minor routing improvements

v0.115D

More changes to packet routing.. Please upgrade ASAP.

v0.116A

This version has stricter blocking of older clients, which will mean less noise and more useful data being pass around. We`ve also introduced a couple of extra network mods that should help with channel searching and fetching. We`re going to have to do this gradually so we`ve included 2 variables that are sent back when you connect to connect1.peercast.org. One is the TTL of the broadcast packets that contain channel/track info. The other is the percentage of clients that send out those packets.

Older clients (pre 0.115D) are now blocked from the network. So please make sure you use the latest client.

v0.116B

* Changes/Improvements to networking
* Security fix related to empty passwords

v0.117A

New version of all the clients are available on the downloads page.

This version includes some much needed improvements in the packet routing. All routed packets are also now given higher priority over broadcasted packets, this means that things like Push requests should go through the network alot faster and more efficiently. They`ll also be more reliable because the return route has more chance of staying connected before the packet reaches its destination.

You should start seeing an improvement as soon as you install the new version, but as always, it takes a while for people to upgrade so it won`t be hugely noticeble for a while.

You can also add other peercast relays manually now. Just enter the URL of the stream on the client you want to relay into the Broadcast->URL box and hit Create Relay. The URL should look like this:

http://[ip-address]/pls/[channel-id].pls

or

http://[ip-address]/channel/[channel-id]

Doing this will fetch the stream from that client and re-broadcast it out from your own client. You can do this normally of course by just clicking the Relay link underneath any channel, but sometimes its hard for broadcasters to appear in the channels list with only one client on the network.

v0.117B - Big update

Please upgrade again as soon as possible (sorry for putting out 2 versions in 2 days)

You should notice a huge improvement connecting to channels with this version. The code that decides which host to connect to recieve a channel has been considerably improved. It now chooses the easiest host to connect to, rather than the semi-random way it was done before.
It bases its choice on 3 main things:

Uptime
- The host that has had the channel longest is picked first.

Non-Firewalled then Firewalled
- Non-firewalled hosts are chosen before firewalled hosts. This should have been in from the start, but there were a few other things that needed to be fixed first.

Closest
- If after searching for non-firewalled hosts, only firewalled hosts are left it will choose the host that is closest (least amount of hops)

There are also 3 new INI file options:

pushTries
- When requesting a stream to be pushed the client will try this amount of times before giving up. Default: 5

pushTimeout
- Each push try will timeout after this amount of seconds. Default: 60

maxPushHops
- Do not try to connect to hosts that are more than this many hops away. Default: 8

Some Query/Hit bugs were also found and fixed for this version. Although searching for channels isn`t as important on peercast as it is for other P2P apps (peercast uses a different method to find channels), it meant that most searches weren`t being sent out properly at all. Which meant that if you clicked on a peercast:// link and the channel wasn`t already in the list, then it took alot longer to find the channel than it should have.

v0.117E - beta

There is a new version available that adds a few new interesting things:

- Organised re-networking
You can now add an extra parameter to peercast:// links: ip=[ip:port]
eg. peercast://pls/EF49346D72FD05F234D3DA2C33FF3A9C?ip=61.213.94.129:2010

This effectively turns peercast from a "free for all" Gnutella style network, into an organised bittorrent type of network. If it works well we`ll probably phase out the current passive search way of finding channels and rely solely on this.

Basically what happens is that peercast makes a network (not direct) connection to that IP if it doesn`t know where the channel is. The reason this is important is because whenever new connections are made, a list of channels is passed between clients. So if you don`t have a certain channel, you just need to connect to someone who knows where it is.

Broadcasters should place an ip parameter on the end of their links pointing to their broadcasting client so that users can get the channel without having to wait for it to appear in their local list. Remember that this creates a new network connection, not direct stream connection. So if your broadcasting client is full, then new listeners will go and fetch the channel from another client on that cluster of the network.

You can also replace ip with pip. This has the same effect but it creates a private network just for that channel. This is still quite experimental but the idea is that using a private network cuts down on the amount of unwanted noise from other channels. The disadvantage is that you cut yourself off from the main network, so things like the YP, normal users etc. won`t be able to see your channel unless they`re also on your private network.

You can add as many ips/pips as you want to the end of the URL, or any combination such as ip,ip,pip,pip etc. Peercast will try and connect to all of them.

Once this version is released properly (as 0.118) we`ll make some changes to the YP to make it easier to connect to channels.

- NSV Streaming
Some bugs relating to NSV streaming have been fixed. So it works now. It doesn`t grab the metadata out yet, but we`ve been testing it here for a while and it works very well. You can use nsvenc to broadcast to peercast from static files or grab from a capture device (although we couldn`t get it working with an ATI 9700 All-In-Wonder, which is a shame because we could have broadcasted some Japanese TV then. Seems to work fine with a USB camera though). One problem with using nsvenc for realtime static file broadcasting is that it sends the data as fast as it can convert it.. So theres another new feature:

- Basic broadcasting source streaming
You can now use file:// URLs in the Broadcast page to get peercast to broadcast either a playlist containing a list of files, or a single file itself. Theres no re-encoding done obviously so you have to make sure that all the files use the same bitrate. Because of this, you also have to make sure that you set the correct Bitrate for the relay as well. If you don`t then peercast will just stream the data as fast as it can read it and you`ll get large chunks missing.
One use of this is to stream a list of NSV/MP3/OGG files that have all been pre-encoded to the same bitrate so don`t need re-encoding by shout/oddcast/ices etc. It also severely reduces the amount of CPU use of course.
You can`t update playlists on the fly yet, and it always loops forever. But that should be easy to change in the future.

Downloads:

Win32:
http://www.peercast.org/peercast-install-0117E.exe

WinAmp2.X
http://www.peercast.org/peercast-wa2-0117E.exe

Linux:
http://www.peercast.org/peercast-linux-0117E.tgz

v0.118A

The new public version has been released. This is basically v0.117E but with a few minor bug fixes.

v0.118B

The last version had a few connection problems it would seem. Our apologies.. we`ll get there eventually.

v0.118C

Some Windows users might have had problems trying to connect to the network because their filter settings were not working properly.

This version should hopefully fix that.

v0.119A (beta) - WMA/WMV streaming

Peercast can now stream WMA (audio) and WMV (video).

We recommend using the excellent (and free) Windows Media Encoder 9 or Oddsock`s oddcast v2 encoder for Winamp.

Peercast currently only supports pulling from the encoder, so for Windows Media Encoder select "Pull from encoder" and enter the URL into the broacast page of peercast. (eg. http://localhost:8080)
You also need to set the Name, Type (either WMA or WMV) and Bitrate so that other people can see what you`re broadcasting (the bitrate is actually set automatically but its a good idea to set it anyway)

ASX files are also supported so you should be able to give most streaming links straight to peercast. Please visit here for some examples.

Windows:
http://www.peercast.org/peercast-install-0119A.exe
Winamp2.x:
http://www.peercast.org/peercast-wa2-0119A.exe
Linux:
http://www.peercast.org/peercast-linux-0119A.tgz

0.119B

This version adds a number of new things:

- A new flow control algorithm

When the output packet queue of a connection reaches 50% it goes into flow control mode. FC mode basically drops incoming packets and prioritizes outgoing packets based on their type and hop count.
FC gets turned off when the queue falls back below 25%

- Incremental "hit" broadcasts

Up until now, clients that had been relaying longer were not given priority over clients that had just joined the network. Relays with higher uptimes are more valuable to peercast because they`re more reliable in terms of being able to connect to them. So we`ve made it so that broadcast packets start off with a TTL of 1, then for every 5 minutes of relaying the TTL is incremented by 1. So for instance, in order to broadcast a packet with a TTL of 7 you will have to have relayed the channel for at least 35 minutes. This will make the life of a packet relative to the uptime of the client and so hopefully cut down on the amount of packets going around from "dead" relays.

One of the side effects of this is going to be lower listener/relay counts in the YP because alot/most of the packets will never reach the YP clients. But we`ve made it so that the min/max/interval parameters are set by the lookup host (ie. connect1.peercast.org) which means we can adjust the values on the fly later on without having to ask people to download a new version.

- Max. uptime setting

Theres a new ini file setting called maxUptime, by default this is 0 which means unlimited. But users can change this to give them a certain amount of anonymity. The maxUptime is a cap on the uptime value sent by clients when they are relaying or broadcasting a channel. The idea is that by capping your uptime value its impossible to tell who has actually been relaying the longest, hence its difficult to tell who the original broadcaster is. This value (in seconds) should not be set lower than about 1 hour otherwise your broadcast packets will always have a low TTL.

- Description setting in the Broadcast page

You can now add a description for broadcasts fetched from external sources (ie. from the Broadcast page)

- OGG Vorbis comment field fix

There was a limit of 255 bytes on fields in the comment packet. This has been increased to 8192. Please note though that the maximum peercast packetsize is much smaller than this, so please try and keep the comment entries as small as possible.

This version has been rushed a bit, so please test it as much as possible so that we can fix anything before it gets released properly.

Windows:
http://www.peercast.org/peercast-install-0119B.exe

Linux:
http://www.peercast.org/peercast-linux-0119B.tgz

Winamp 2.x:
http://www.peercast.org/peercast-wa2-0119B.exe

0.119C

This is the newest public release that incorporates the past couple of beta versions.

Please read this and this for more details.

The beta versions are no longer available, so please download the latest version from here.

0.119D

Minor fix to file:// type broadcasting where the uptime for the channel was being reset between songs. The uptime is now very important because it determines the TTL value for broadcast packets, ie. how many hosts will see your channel.

v0.1204

Its friday (well Saturday here now) .. so its upgrade time 

New in this version:

* HTML templates, there`s currently only English and Japanese (very basic), but its easy to add new languages now. If you would like to contribute a new language, please take a look inside the HTML directory.

* UTF8 is now the standard format that Peercast uses for all channel names/titles etc. Currently SJIS and EUC-JP is converted to Unicode and encoded in UTF8 when it enters peercast either via Icy/Shout or from the Broadcast page. Please make sure that you use UTF8 if you are using any other non-ASCII characters.

* IP Salting option (see the Settings page).. if you turn this Off then the channel IDs are NOT affected by your IP address. This is useful if you`re on dialup and your IP changes quite often. It turns out IP salting was never really needed, because each client "salts" the IDs with a private ID beforehand anyway.

* Hopefully less YP disconnection.. If you do still find yourself disconnected, you shouldn`t need to restart your client. Just go to the "Information" page and clear the Channel Cache. It should force your client to go back up to the YP.

Oh, and the Winamp plugin is back

v0.1205

This version fixes a few problems:

- Cookie login fixed
- HTML pages refresh fixed
- Settings page DJ Message fixed
- Win32 UI menu popup links fixed
- Odd problem with peercast:// links not working properly.. fixed?

v0.1206

* German language support in the HTML (thanks to mjakobi for the translation and logo idea)

* New simpler Windows GUI

* Fixed some problems with queued up channels starting to play after you`ve clicked on a different channel.. Most likely the cause of the problem some people had where channels stop playing after 60 seconds.

* Better "client selection", occaisonally clients got stuck trying to connect either to themselves or to other dead clients.

* Added port option to HTML interface.

v0.1207

* Removed ICY read timeout. Caused disconnections from odd/ice/sam/shoutcast when no data was being broadcasted.

* Added French HTML templates (Many thanks to Fabrice for the translation)

* Changed GUI slightly to show Max Relays instead of Max Output. Also Max Relays is set to 1 by default. This was quite important because the old default settings didn`t allow for relaying of channels over 128k !!

Now the default settings are:

Max total relays = 1
Max relays per channel = 0 (unlimited)
Max output (kbps) = 0 (unlimited)

This allows 1 relay by default. If you have more bandwidth to spare, please change one or all of the above settings.

* Improved connections to channels. Basically you get more than just one "hit" from someone when you ask for a channel. They now send up to 8 hits back.

* Removed IP salting (and option) altogether.

v0.1208

Please upgrade/test as soon as possible..

Just to clear up some confusion, these are the basic relay settings:

Max. Relays
Maximum number of peercast relays to serve directly from your client. This should always be 1 or more.
Default: 1

Max. Direct Streams
Maximum number of direct streams to serve from your client. A direct stream is anything that is not a peercast relay. eg. a connection to Winamp. Naturally streams to your own machine (ie. localhost) don`t count.
Default: 0 (none)

Max. Output
The maximum upload limit, ie. how much bandwidth can be used by peercast to serve channels from your client.
Default: 0 (unlimited)

Max. Relays per Channel
This seems to confuse alot of people, but its really quite simple. Its the maximum number of relays to allocate to each channel. eg. If you are broadcasting two 64k channels but can only upload 128k, then you can set this value to 1 to prevent all your bandwidth being used up on the same channel.
Default: 0 (unlimited)

You can change any or all of these settings.
Also, please note that 0 for the Max Direct Streams option means none, not unlimited.

v0.1209

New version was released yesterday.

Main changes are:

* Direct stream buffering has been removed.
When your audio player contacts peercast and starts receiving a channel, it gets fed fresh data rather than buffered data. Before now, it used to get a lump of buffered data all in one go which caused problems for some players when they listened to low bitrate channels.. ie. the 60 second timeout problem. (We think this is the cause of the problem, its difficult to tell because we`ve never seen it first hand)

* Ghost channel fix.
Sometimes, especially when sending a broadcast from one machine to another over an unreliable connection (ie. the Internet), you got multiple copies of the same channel appearing. This happened because the previous connection wasn`t always closed properly while it was waiting for new data.

* Longer socket timeouts
Read/write timeouts have been increased from 10 to 30 seconds. Although this might cause longer connection times it should make the firewall detection between clients more reliable.

[Technical note]
I think we need to explain about how firewall detection currently works in peercast, because there's been alot of complaints about it recently.

All clients are classed as "firewall unknown" when they boot up. When they first connect to either the YP or a channel tracker (eg. the original broadcaster), their firewall status is checked by simply seeing if the client can accept an incoming connection or not. If the client doing the check (ie. the YP or the tracker) can connect to the other client within 30 seconds then it is told that it is non-firewalled. If the connection fails, or timesout then the client is told that it is firewalled.

This check is vital because it lets other peercast clients know how to connect to the client, either via direct connection or via "push" request.

For broadcasters, the firewall check is always performed by the YP because its the first client that they contact.

For listeners, usually the check is done by the trackers (broadcasting clients) themselves whenever a new listener clicks on a link in the YP. If however the tracker itself is firewalled then the YP performs the check before telling the broadcaster to send the channel to the client (if it can.)

So theres 2 cases where the firewall check can fail.

* The YP is overloaded or has network problems.

* The broadcasting client is overloaded or has network problems.

So, if you find that your listeners always seem to have their firewall status set to On, even when they`re clearly not firewalled, then please first check to see if the URL for your channel in the YP has an IP address on the end of it or not. If it doesn`t have an IP address or the end of it, then for whatever reason (as stated above) the YP thinks you are firewalled, in which case all of your listeners will have their firewalls checked by the YP as welll, and the YP might be having network problems.
If you do have an IP address on the end of the URL, then it will be your client that does the firewall checks. In which case, please check that you are not having network problems.

Whats not immediately obvious is that although you (or your listeners) may be able to connect to the YP or your client, the YP or your client might not be able to connect to them. Such is the way the Internet works. There are outages which affect one direction but not the other.

We are working on ways to improve this though, so please bear with us as always and try and give to us as much feedback as possible, including log outputs, tests you`ve tried etc.

If you find that you are consistently marked as firewalled even though you know for certain that other people on the Internet (not LAN) can connect to your peercast port without problems, then you can edit the peercast.ini file and change the forceNormal = No line to forceNormal = Yes.

This will tell peercast not to bother checking its firewall status, and tell other users that you can accept incoming connections.

However, DO NOT set this flag if you are uncertain about it. Specifically, don`t set this flag if:

1. You are on a network and don`t know what NAT or port forwarding is.

2. You are on a network and you have not told your router to forward TCP port 7144 to your PC.

3. You have installed any kind of firewall on your PC.

Otherwise your peercast client just won`t work at all.

v0.1214(beta)

A new version is available for testing, v0.1214.

This is still classed as a "beta" because it has had some major changes made to it and not much testing yet.

Changes include:

* Unlimited channels - there used to be a max. of 8 relayed/broadcasted channels per client. This has been changed to allow upto as many as your machine can handle.

* Unlimited listeners - strictly speaking the current clients do allow an unlimited number of listeners, but there was limit of 200 "known" clients per channel. This limit has been removed.

To download v0.1214 beta, please visit the downloads page.

v0.1215

v0.1215 has some overflow bug fixes.

Thanks to Stefan C. at gentoo for alerting us.

v0.1217

This fixes a serious buffer overrun vulnerability discovered by Leon at INFIGO IS (http://www.infigo.hr/)

many thanks to them for alerting us promptly.

edit: This version also fixes the annoying "please upgrade" message that can occur every couple of minutes on the Windows stand-alone version.